...ruffles...

Scarlett flares. You wouldn’t would you? You might, a dose of attitude and some self belief and you might. But what about putting it with silver moccasins and a brown batwing jumper. You wouldn’t then, would you?

You wouldn’t because people might laugh at you. Even those who would, do it because they want to make a statement, show their individuality, and push forward the boundary of fashion. All that jazz. We all fear being laughed at. That’s why you see so few people browsing the detergents in Tesco wearing a tiger stripe posing pouch, flip flops and an old school Nike windcheater.

The fundamental rule of clothes is to never buy anything that makes people laugh at you. Unless you’re a clown of course.

On Saturday this bloke called his girlfriend over after pulling out a t-shirt which had a MasterCard logo on it. It had the legend “No woman, no money, no job – Masturbation is the only answer”. They both laughed, “I’ve got to get this” he said before heading for the till.

It got me thinking, or at least noticing, that comedy t-shirts are a plague in British High Streets. Spearheading this is FCUK, who make millions from just one joke. Why? It’s a t-shirt which makes people laugh at you. Not with you, you didn’t write the joke, at you.

I don’t blame British men for adding this ill-advised flourish to their sartorial repertoire. The choice of men’s clothing is dire. Many women love shopping because they can browse shops knowing there’s a good chance they’ll find something which stands out. Blouse, t-shirt, jumper, vest, or the uniquely generic ‘top’. Skirt (mini, short, knee length, full length, fitted, full etc.), trousers (jeans, trousers, linen, three-quarter length, full length. Heals, flat, sandals, flip flops, trainers, boots (ankle, knee – hummana hummana). Suits, trouser, skirt. Linen, silk, cotton, wool. Neck lines… plunging, turtle neck, backless, collars, normal. Red, black, white, pink, blue, turquoise, mint, green, olive, yellow, lemon. Every colour and every shade of colour.

And then the men; trousers or jeans, jumper, shirt, t-shirt, polo shirt, trainers, boots, shoes. Brown, blue, black, grey, white, green. Suit. That’s it. That’s what you’re average high street shop has on offer. It means that browsing for clothes is a fundamentally underwhelming experience so you adopt a more pragmatic approach to shopping. I need a pair of jeans. I will get a pair of jeans.

Men are hardly being encouraged to dress better, make more effort or innovate. David Beckham turns up in lemon, he’s laughed at. Turns up in a nice black suit? Woof woof. Sarah Jessica Parker wears trousers on her head? INNOVATION! INSPIRATION! WHAT A STATEMENT! She’s such a sassy, sexy and independent woman.

The reason men hate shopping for clothes because it’s as stimulating as buying petrol, give me some choice and I’m all over it.

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Labels: General me

As I drive back from work during the winter it’s dark. Dark as, well, the night. Because it is the night. When nights draw in. Like they do. In the winter. The headlights of the car pick up the feint scent of a familiar route and lead me home.

The long winding country roads reveal nothing of what is either side of me, it’s a murderous murk punctuated by the occasional glare of an on coming vehicle, the twinkle of the eye of the local fauna startled by the snarl of my engine.

Spat out from the dowdy urban pit of Wycombe I’m quickly deep in the countryside, into a radio silence, a wilderness. After about fifteen minutes the tranquillity is pierced. In the distance my path is lined by red dots the size of pinheads.

I’m being watched; each dot marks the infrared night sight of a security camera prowling the perimeter of the Prime Minister’s country retreat Chequers. I know it’s Chequers, most people who drive the route will know. The concrete bollards lining the inside of the main gate are a dead give away, but the billion pound security system is well guarded and barely breaks the surface of the countryside idyll.

However, two fucking armed policemen with sub-machine guns wandering through the outskirts of the estate this evening started to break up the malaise I can tell you.

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Labels: General me

Things I have learnt from Annia’s wedding on Saturday: -

• “Comedian rare” is a great way of describing the quality of someone’s speech
• Even though I don’t know whether it’s a compliment or an insult
• Mad Dog Mickey Lewis needs space to dance to Baggy Trousers by Madness
• Regardless of its pressure, softened hotel water doesn’t give you the deep clean you need after three hours sleep
• Nobody knows the legal position if a baby shouts out when the registrar asks of any legal impediments to the marriage
• Boys and Girls by Blur into Euro trance is the single worst piece of DJ programming ever heard
• Star jumps are an entirely acceptable way of dancing to Common People by Pulp
• I’ve grown quite a lot since I was eleven
• It takes less time to forget it’s on than it takes for a hotel kettle to boil
• Saying goodbye to nineteen immediate family members on a Sunday morning is a long process
• Despite Sophie’s (pictured) insistence otherwise, there are no tigers or elephants at Bosworth Hall
• Or mice

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Labels: General me

John Fulkes, the head of sixth form at my old school, died of a ‘natural causes’ last weekend. He was a permanent presence at the school through several generations and seemed bullet-proof. I’ll leave the gushing praise to others, because I haven’t met anyone who didn’t have a beef with him at some point or other. When Emma took her A Levels they taught the wrong syllabus on one of the subjects. The entire group failed but JF chose to ignore the appeals and protestations. If you were a sportsman or had Oxbridge potential you would win far more attention than the vast majority of ‘normal’ students.

He did, however, create in his sixth form an environment that allowed me to develop friendships with some of my favourite people in the whole world. Something he did time and time again for thousands of people. If that’s his only legacy, then he did OK.

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Labels: General me

Bowling for Columbine identified the fear of failure is the lynch pin to dysfunction within American society. Stupid White Men is a naively irritating rant by comparison. Michael Moore’s central argument is that ‘Stupid White Men’ are ruling and destroying the world. A fair point. Amongst some fairly generic views on the environment (we should care for it more) and capitalism (it’s not fair) his central solution is to employ black people and let women rule the world. His proposed solution to Northern Ireland? All Irish Protestants should turn Catholic.

It starts promisingly with a chapter on George Bush engineering his presidential victory through the manipulation of the courts, the electoral register and the media. It ends well, questioning the relationship the Bush family has with the bin Laden’s (although even here it’s their relationship with the respected Saudi oil family not their enfant terrible Osama). The rest is as insightful as an A Level politics and economics essay. Moore reveals that big corporations don’t make people redundant because they’re losing money, it’s because they’re making less profit than they originally promised to shareholders. Greedy white men, says Moore, but anyone who didn’t realise that stock trading is a measured bet against a company’s future growth is more stupid than the stupid (but rich) white men Moore rallies against.

To a moderate liberal like me Bush is undoubtedly a scary right wing fanatic who believes in the power of the market (and the bible) to cure all social ills, but just because Michael Moore is a left wing idealist, it doesn’t make him look any less stupid.

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Labels: Films

Embarrassingly I compromised Russ’ political sensibilities on Saturday by naively assuming point-to-point racing was a charming countryside pursuit. I didn’t realise it’s organised by the same people who run fox hunting. Russ doesn’t like the merciless murder of foxes so he isn’t really into funding the hunt.

The first page of the race card said, “If the hunt it is made illegal this will be the last point to point meeting”. Whilst it has no obvious form of income, point-to-point racing has the entry fee, the betting, food and drink, sponsorship, and the other stalls. You suspect if it were the racing that was made illegal, the hunt wouldn’t survive, not the other way around.

If I were about to be pushed off a cliff for not having a view on fox hunting I’d say that I was against it. Pro-hunt arguments don’t seem sustainable; it’s a labour intensive way of ‘maintaining a happy and stable fox community’. However in the main, it doesn’t affect me on a day-to-day basis. For a good day out at the point to point, I’m prepared to turn a blind eye.

There was a heavy presence of the Countryside Alliance at the event. The CA is the largest pressure group dedicated to countryside living. This is not difficult when you have the ambiguous manifesto and over-simplified worldview they have.

The Alliance is an umbrella organisation supporting all country pursuits, this means 250,000 people joined its protest march a couple of years ago; pro and anti fox hunting groups, walkers and mountain bikers, farmers and city commuters.

So, how does the CA maintain any coherence? Well, their main thrust is that country people should be able to decide their own fate and city people should keep their noses out of business they don’t understand. They have created a conveniently polarised view that the world is made up of city people and country people – and never the twain shall meet.

Short of ring fencing cities and creating countryside border controls it is impossible to clearly define these two groups of people. The symbiotic relationship between the country and the city is conveniently ignored.

Because of the ambiguity, the CA is run by people tailoring the overtly quaint ‘countryside living’ manifesto to their own more radical one. They are also backed by people who support the quaint agenda without realising they are also supporting the radicals. The vast majority of people, who have more liberal yet complex views on the countryside, have no mechanism to voice their opinion.

We live four miles from Kimble, from the countryside, but we live in a rather large town. I work in a large town and regularly commute into London. My time is spent in mostly towns, but part of the appeal of the area is its proximity to open fields. Our friends live in cities, and on farms, and in villages and in large towns. I’m not a welly wearing country dweller, I’m not a world weary city slicker. I am, like most people, a person who lives in a country who doesn’t have a conveniently linear view of countryside living.

The Countryside Alliance conveniently ignores the complexity, choosing to propagate an ambiguous political agenda. As such they enjoy an unprecedented level of support, publicity and inevitably influence that they barely deserve.

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Labels: General me

Did I really hear Arsenal football legend Ian Wright describe Robert Pires’ punch on Gary Neville during last Saturday’s FA Cup semi-final as “Nothing more than a beeatch slap”?

AND, did I really hear Lotus driving management consultant Cambridge educated middle class country boy Graham Spankee saying to the waitress reciting our order in the Thai resteraunt. “Yo girlfriend, yo’ll over that”?

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Labels: Football

Some people have greatness thrust upon them, others have trite irrelevancies. I’m one of those people. Somewhere in the subtext of my story I have been given a heavy burden… of playing Steps bingo.

Steps’ appeal stretched little further than girls under five and gay men, but it still made them shameless millionaires. They were the cursed enemy of music until they grew up, wanted to be taken seriously and split. I saw Lee Latchford Evans on Oxford Street last week. Lee always looked slightly embarrassed by what he was doing. To him Steps was a pub bet that got out of hand.

Big deal, London is full of minor celebs. Have you ever yearned to see Ben Fogle and Dr ‘Foxy’ Fox on the same street? I did that the other day. The Lee spot was significant because a few years ago I saw fellow band member Lisa Scott Lee also on Oxford Street. My Steps bingo card has two names crossed off, is the significance of this starting to become clear to you?

Lisa was buying a suit for her male companion. Incidentally, if it was one of her brothers, that means I saw a member of 3SL, as well, BEFORE they were famous. Bizarrely Lisa was in the middle of a High Street store on Oxford Street dressed in a silver blue mini dress, a stage outfit, if you will.

Now, with Faye Tozer, it’s a case of so near yet so far. Penny’s friend from college is a friend of Faye’s. With some harmless obsessive stalking I could get Faye onto my Steps Bingo card.

I don’t currently have a lead on H although I’m pretty sure a quick tour around the nation’s Pontins resorts and gay bards will soon prove fruitful. Clare, I have no lead on at all. I’m not too worried as I plan for her to be last. When I do get to Clare, I shall stand in front of her with my Steps bingo card and a marker pen. I shall look her in the eye and with a slightly odd smile on my face I shall shout triumphantly...

“Clickety click big fat hips.”

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Labels: Music

“Hello, are you Parts?” I asked the ladies sitting tapping into their computers.

I’d been sent from Services by a girl with a stern pragmatic air about her. She told me that it would take ‘0.8 of an hour’ to fix the broken aerial on my car. 0.8 of an hour, to save you the calculation, is 48 minutes. 0.8 of an hour is not a time convention. 48 minutes is, “about 50 minutes” is, as is “Just under an hour”, “Not long”, or even the expectation management favourite “A couple of hours”. These are all perfectly acceptable ways of relating time to someone. Robots deal in 0.8 of an hours.

I would have booked for the work to be done by Services, but I wasn’t allowed. I had to go to Parts, a desk about five feet away, to find out whether they had the part in. Services, you see, couldn’t possibly talk to Parts themselves. Why should they, what have car parts got to do with fixing a car anyway?

The ladies tapping into their computers weren’t Parts; they were The Desk Between Parts and Services. They were border control, the desk that worked to ensure Parts and Services didn’t communicate or work together. Parts was the next desk down.

When I got to Parts there was a man with a beard slumped on the desk. He raised his head to look at me. “I was clean shaven when I got here” he said. He was lying, judging by the length of my wait he’d been there since before he was old enough to drive. I waited. Whilst I did, a man who I’d seen hovering around the back of Services walked behind the Parts desk. Imagine someone from Services fraternising with Parts. The only thing that would have made it worse would be if he had talked to Parts about, for example, whether they had my car aerial in stock.

“Yes mate” a bloke with a long nose came out from the back of Parts. I’m not a formal person, a “Yes mate” is entirely appropriate in the right environment. Record shops and pubs are “Yes mate” places. The plush dealership of a multi-national car company is not a “Yes mate” place.

I explained that I’d been sent by Services with a rye, ‘isn’t that faintly ridiculous’, look on my face, he listened impassively. “Is the aerial attached through the roof or the light fitting?” a faint flicker of life was evident which may just have been the light reflecting off the back of his empty skull.

I had no idea, so we went outside to find out. He reached over to the remaining stump of my aerial and pulled and yanked at it, then without looking at me or saying a word he set off back towards Parts. I called out, “It may be that it’s just the stalk that’s broken”. He ignored me and didn’t look back. Cut off from the oxygen of Parts he obviously needed to get back as soon as possible.

I couldn’t catch up; by the time I got back to Parts he was gone. He came back a couple of minutes later, thumped about four and a half thousand numbers into his computer.

“That’s £10 then”

I paid.

“I’ll get you a receipt” he disappeared. Then came back with an A4 sheet of paper somewhere on it, it said “1 x aerial = £10.00”.

I didn’t go back to Services to get it fixed, I didn’t want to get involved in their domestic disputes.

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Labels: General me

It was a war crime and terror double header on Sunday. Channel 4’s The Man Who Ate His Archbishop’s Liver, the story of Idi Amin, followed by Panorama on the continuing threat of Al Qaeda. Can anyone remember what Panorama used to cover before Al Qaeda? – “Plum growing in inhospitable environments” or “Quiet day today, but wasn’t it windy”.

I slept badly throughout the weekend; I was awake at 6am on Saturday and 7am on Sunday. I found myself dozing off for long periods whilst the programmes bubbled along in the back of my consciousness.

I don’t know what happened whilst I was asleep, but I think I must have rolled on the remote control switching to the soft porn fests on Men and Motors or Live TV. When I eventually went to bed I had a series of vivid dreams of being subject to terrorist attacks by a crack team of glamour models in blue hot pants.

Which, I guess is the fun side to Terrorism.

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Labels: News

My first live football game was when I was three. Oxford Versus Southampton Apparently I spent the whole game cheering the floodlights. Sweet. As I grew up, I assumed footballers to be the same as me. They were fans playing for their favourite club. As I got older I realised there was a reduced sense of loyalty; players wanted to ultimately play for the big clubs and win cups. By and large, they didn’t come from the towns they played for. However, the basic principles still applied. Footballers wanted to win football games for their clubs.

This was reinforced when the Premiership was formed; a flood of cheap foreign players meant suddenly a huge proportion of the footballing community were never going to make it to the big time.

There is very little logic to being a lower league footballer. By and large the money is poor, the rewards are few and the career is short. Take Andy Woodman, Oxford’s goalkeeper, he earns £40,000 a year, which is OK for a 32 year old man. Except in a couple of years his career will be over. The job he sacrificed everything else for, including an education, and a sustainable source of income will be gone. At the age when many people are trying to find stability in their lives he will be starting again.

The logic, if there is any, is that football is a great game to play, it’s great for attracting pretty girls, and every week five thousand people think you’re the best thing ever. And, once or twice in your short career, if you have a successful season, those people will never forget you for as long as they live. Do you know who Dave Langan is? I do, he works as a car park attendant and is crippled with arthritis. I’ve never met him, but in the mid-80’s he helped Oxford gain promotion to the top division and win the Milk Cup. For me, and the thousands who experienced that, Dave Langan will always be a huge hero. He’s paying for that now, but there are plenty of more successful people who will die unknown. Not Dave Langan.

Oxford are ten games from the end of the season, we’re in a white-hot promotion dogfight. It’s tooth and nail stuff, sometimes we win, sometimes we lose, sometimes other teams win, sometimes other teams lose. The table changes, each game is high tension and high drama. The great thing about lower league football is that it’s not polarised. Bottom teams beat top teams, unexpected things happen. On 8th May, we may be promoted, in the play-offs, or in utter despair because we’ve just missed out. It’s the kind of situation the players, fans and managers are in the game for.

Yesterday, Oxford’s current manager, Ian Atkins was announced as the new manager of Bristol Rovers. He will start in the summer when his contract at Oxford runs out. In doing this he’s taking a step down the league table. Rovers have potential, but are currently struggling. In the here and now, Oxford are right in the middle of something exciting and achievable.

This clearly means nothing to Atkins. He’s got a mortgage to pay, he says, and there was no guarantee of a new Oxford contract in the summer. Fair enough, except if that’s all your bothered about, go and work in a bank. There is far more security and less pressure in other jobs. People get into football for the buzz, the opportunity to achieve something and, when they do, receive more rewards, plaudits and recognition than in any other job. A fact, myth perhaps, that he’s utterly destroyed. This is not about making a mark; it’s about paying his mortgage. In fact, by doing what he’s done, taking a step down for more money, and doing it on the verge of achieving something great at Oxford he’s undermined everything I believe about football.

Ultimately what does he want? Whether promotion is achieved or not, he’s got his security. He’s not an Oxford fan, I know that, but he sets the agenda within his team. If he doesn’t want it, why should the players play, and ultimately what are the fans turning up for?

In the same way that Pop Idol revealed the nasty cynical side of music that has always existed but people don’t want to know about. Atkins has revealed in the most cynical way possible that all the rhetoric about passion and focus is, quite frankly, bullshit. The damage he’s done in this one act has wiped out the two years of work he’s put in to get Oxford into this position. He’s been suspended by the club this morning. Hopefully he’ll just fuck off and Oxford will get promoted. When they do, I want him to be sitting in his securely mortgaged house watching and wandering what he’s done. The smug little shit may think that it’s all down to him, but he can whistle for any recognition he wants from me.

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Labels: Football

Emma was sitting on the table looking bemused, in one hand she held my car keys in the other the deeds to the house. Slowly she was being covered in the clothes I was wearing. Finally, standing totally naked, when everything was gone, I was ready. Black, I said. It came up red.

OK, so this isn’t exactly how I lost my phone in Vegas. It was more of an absent minded packing incident. Apparently when Emma gave the coded signal (“Shall we just check the room before we go?”) I was expected to check that I had my car keys (I did, in the pocket of my jeans at the bottom of my rucksack) and my phone (I didn’t, it was under the bed).

It wasn’t until I got home that I realised it was lost, the fact it was so avoidable was frustrating in the extreme. I could claim it back on the insurance, but having to pay the £50 excess barely made it worth it.

I decided to speculatively contact the hotel, the website only had a phone number for reservations but was spam-bustingly free of email addresses.

I went back to Google, and put in “@luxor.com” perhaps somewhere on the web there was an email address I could use. There was one, deep inside the Luxor website there was an address for their Marketing and Promotions department who look after The Blue Man Group and the Ra topless nightclub. I wrote to them asking for my phone back.

It was a long shot, the hotel has 4,500 rooms, two Imax cinemas, a nightclub, theatre, shops, casino and numerous restaurants and whilst I could isolate the phone to somewhere in room 6016 the size of the hotel meant it was rather like sending an email to the Mayor of Thame to tell him my phone was lost in the sub post office inside Martins the newsagent.

I continued with my insurance application with little urgency or enthusiasm. On Tuesday we were left a card by the postman to say that they’d tried to deliver a package and that it was currently at the sorting office. Maybe it had worked; maybe the phone had been returned. I went to the sorting office and handed the card in…

It was another Brittannia Music Club CD, which they still send me despite endless requests to leave the club. On Wednesday, however, a package arrived from the Luxor, Las Vegas, no note, or complimentary slip, just one carefully packaged Sony Ericsson T310.

Except my phone is a Nokia 465. No, that’s a lie too. It was my phone, how good is that? If that email had arrived in my work inbox it would either have been deleted, or delegated into a black hole where only the lap of the gods would have controlled whether it would have reached a satisfactory conclusion or not.

I think they could teach our company a thing or two about customers. At a recent customer service training day the facilitator asked someone to describe our customers. “Timewasters mostly” responded the women in front of everyone including our Chief Executive. She is most dim-witted person I have ever met, but it’s a view reflected across the whole company.

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Labels: Holiday

It wasn’t looking good; Emma raced to four wedges before Vicki had got from the middle to the outside rim of the board. Nobby had systematically accumulated his wedges with effortless efficiency and was two from victory. Emma got her fifth, even Vicki had bagged four in between hysterical fits of giggles.

It’d been a dirty fight; Nobby tricked Vicki into switching her correct answer of pens to razors in response to the product Bic sells 7 million of every day. Nobby was then denied a wedge when he jumped in with the answer “Thorpe Park, no, Legoland” to the theme park near Windsor. The war of attrition was on.

Ruffles’ game had been pedestrian. Having boasted that the Trivial Pursuit 20th Anniversary edition was easy with badly written and telegraphed questions I had been by-stander whilst the others’ battled for victory. With just three wedges and no rhythm I was resigned to battling for nothing but personal pride.

Emma hovered around to pick up her final wedge, even at one point proclaimed victory when it wasn’t hers. Vicki and Nobby needed two wedges. Ruffles, three wedges from victory, all of which were dotted around the board, stepped up to the plate…

Rolls the dice. What colour on the Irish flag represents the Protestants?

Orange

Rolls the dice. Which actress with a famous novel-winning sister has The Ruling Passion, her own book, ridiculed in a New York court?

Joan Collins

Rolls the dice. For the fourth wedge - Which great tennis player was killed by AIDS contracted from a blood transfusion?

Arthur Ashe

Rolls the dice. Roll Again. Rolls the dice, for the fifth wedge - Who controversially kissed Christina and Britney at the 2003 MTV Video Music Awards?

Madonna

Rolls the dice. Which writer with royal connections claimed royal jelly kept her in the pink?

Barbara Cartland

Ruffles rolls a two, Roll Again, a five, for the sixth wedge and victory…

Which Bugs Bunny character came to earth with his space dog, Commander K-9?

I buried my head in the Dobscrubs’ very comfortable sofa, I could picture the little alien dressed like a centurion with a preposterously big helmet. I could even picture the dog and the little flying saucer he came in. He was. From Mars. A Martian. A Martian. Called. Marvin…

MARVIN THE MARTIAN!! (I shouted whilst baby India slept upstairs)

Victory, from nowhere, six questions and three wedges on the bounce, an unprecedented march of glory. If I hadn’t been so tired, I’d have probably danced around the room.

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Labels: General me

It started with the dementia that seems to result from a long haul flight. When we got back home from Boston a couple of years ago we started cleaning the house, despite the fact we hadn’t slept in over 24 hours. Well, the house wasn’t as clean as the 17th floor corner room we had at the Sheraton Hotel so we got the dustpan and brush out.

In September, when I picked Sara and Gareth up from the airport after their honeymoon I took them home and Sara began unpacking. She was missing something. Amongst the mountains of clothes they’d bought, her favourite Abercrombie and Fitch hoodie was missing. She began to well up as she tried to find that extra compartment in her suitcase. The one she knew she didn’t have. The one she hoped might contain the lost hoodie. When that didn’t materialise, of course, it was all about the bitch that cleaned their room and obviously stole it. It caused more heartache than was really necessary.

Vegas was an opportunity to replace the lost hoodie, Sara had done her homework, there were three Abercrombie and Fitchs (Fitchi?). We went to the one at The Forum shops in Caesars Palace. It was there, the hallowed hoodie, she bought it. Then the next day she bought another A&F hoodie. In fact, in the three days we must have gone into Abercrombie’s four or five times. On the plane there was a glamorous couple, she was willowy and model like he looked like a stylist from The Salon. Within a couple of hours of landing we saw them walking down The Strip, she was carrying an Abercrombie bag (they were also on the flight back – he was in an Abercrombie vest and Von Dutch truckers baseball cap, fer chrissakes).

An Abercrombie and Fitch t-shirt, sweatshirt or hoodie is a badge of honour for a British twenty or thirty something. It’s the North American equivalent of a comedy Spanish sombrero available at all tacky beach shops on the Costa Del Sol.

It’s chic-ness derives from scarcity, that you can’t get A&F in the UK. To wear A&F you have to have travelled to the New World and that’s glamorous and cool and groovy. This is despite the fact that its urban chic style is largely indecipherable from Gap. It’s totally over branded, and its current range is absolutely diabolical focussing as they have on some kind of distressed, un-ironed preppie attire. Clearly the glamour of ‘merica is more seductive than the style it offers.

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Labels: General me

Our famous person when we saw The Play What I Wrote on Saturday was Robert Powell which is OK, considering all the good famous people are currently on Back to Reality.

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Labels: General me

We’re a Will and Grace type household. I don’t mean Emma’s a firebrand redhead and I’m a gay guy, except; Emma is a firebrand redhead of course. Specifically, we’re Jack and Karen people, I don’t mean Emma’s a feisty lady with an acidic tongue and I’m a gay guy. Except Emma is a feisty lady with an acidic tongue… Ooh ducky…

Anyway, Fraiser, Friends, Will and Grace, (I should, given my age and social status, add Sienfeld, except I’ve never really seen it) – I like quality American comedies.

In Vegas we got an insight into how Americans make their TV. Deep inside the MGM Grand Sara spotted a small booth with a couple of men in it. The sign outside invited people to ‘sign up’. I went and bought a cool CBS Sports T-shirt, Sara asked what it was they wanted people to sign up for.

It turns out it was they were testing pilot TV shows and were looking for people to give them feedback. Hoping to see the first episode of “My Mom’s Made of Mince” or “Our Neighbours, The Elks” we put our names down.

It turns out we were to watch Mystery Girl (which has worrying amounts of coverage throughout the web), this is a cross between Sex and the City, and Ally McBeal – a quirky former It Girl becomes a writer for a fashion magazine and subsequently uses her It Girl training (an in-depth understanding of fashion labels) to solve crimes. Oh, and she makes friends with her agoraphobic shoe making neighbour.

Yes, really.

In the final scene after she’d solved the murder, and got her front page story Mystery Girl’s impressed boss turned to her and smouldered “But can you do it again?” to which she turned to camera and said “As long as celebrities keep behaving badly.” Before putting her pencil in her mouth seductively.

It was as bad as it sounds; throughout the show we had keypads on which there was a dial and a display. The default display read ‘50’, if we were enjoying the programme we were expected to turn the dial up (Maximum 100), if we were getting bored, we turned it down (to 0). Every second of our enjoyment, or otherwise, was being captured.

By the end of the half hour my dial read ‘6’, Emma’s read ‘4’, Christ, even my TV obsessed younger sister would have only marked it around a 78.

What struck me about the process was what this did to the programme making. Whenever something visually interesting happened I automatically turned the dial up, any extended dialog, I turned it down. As Homer might say; ‘BOOOORING’.

Assuming I’m reasonably representative of the average viewer (apart from not being American, obviously), what this means is according to their research, there should be more visual impact and less blah. Which, of course, would mean something like The Office wouldn’t get out of the starting blocks. It means that TV will only be made if there’s plenty of bang in the buck. Stories, dialog and interplay are simply not commercially viable. The hollowed out characters in Mystery Girl were testament to this.

I understand that Corporate America needs to reduce the risks that creativity offers but we’re all going to end up pretty numb if we continue to follow this path – all we’ll get is a procession of Benny Hill type shows. All the while there is less and less chance another Office, or Monty Python, or Vic and Bob, or Little Britain, or League of Gentlemen reaching our screens.

God bless the BBC, that’s what I say.

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Labels: TV and radio

The Rough Guide gives you some very simple instructions about Las Vegas; if you want to go and look for the hidden city, the one the guide books don’t tell you about that the locals frequent. Don’t bother, it doesn’t exist.

It’s a refreshingly honest place. Turn up, spend money, have fun, go home. We are not here to enrich your soul or enlighten your being. We are bigger and stupider than anywhere in the world.

On average each of the 29 million visitors to Vegas loses $688 gambling. Each slot machine makes on average $250 profit a day, and each table $2500. The hotels are vast complexes which are pumped full of pure oxygen to keep gamblers awake, there are no exit signs or clocks, and drinks are served free to keep the punters’ gambling creative. Wadda place.

I’ll get round to all the various things we did and saw in good time, but in short…

Stayed at the Luxor, shopped at Caesars Palace, took part in some viewer research for an appalling comedy drama pilot show on UPN, went on the rollercoasters on top of the Stratosphere and New York New York, ate at the Bellagio Buffet, gambled a little, saw the Bellagio fountains visited Elvis-a-rama and saw an Elvis impersonator, ate a dozen Krispy Kreme donuts, saw Lance Burton’s magic show, the MGM Lions and Siegfried and Roy’s Tigers, had taxi rides with one driver who wanted to assassinate the president, and one who thought it was funny to hoot his horn at an old woman crossing the road in an electric wheel chair. Took advantage of the outrageously good exchange rate and bought a stack of CD’s and trainers, saw the gondolas on the second floor of the Venetian, had burgers in the Mandalay Bay resort, but not the Rossini burgers, the one with truffles and fois gras, because they were $60…

But we didn’t get married much to the chagrin of everyone who called, emailed and texted within hours of us getting home. Sorry.

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Labels: Holiday

When I went to bed last night I managed to concoct a theory to do with eggs, potatoes and my current situation. Something about there being a basic human need to trade. If I have a potato and he has an egg, but I want egg and he wants a potato, we trade. That’s it. And if that were the only reason for working, to trade to satisfy a basic human need, everyone would be traders and most jobs would be redundant.

Politics, accumulation, and power are the real reasons people in the modern world work. Satisfying the basic human need is actually a tiny proportion of anyone’s spending. Therefore the angst that has resulted from the political shenanigans that have been going on is what I’m really being paid to suffer.

Just to clarify, I haven’t been sacked, or anything like that. Materially nothing has changed; I still do the same job for the same salary. It’s just according to these job ads my salary, which on Thursday was a good one for the company, now equates to a relatively junior role. Which doesn’t change my material well being, just dents my ego. Which is all rather meaningless in the great scheme of things. I’m sorry to bore you with it.

Right, that’s that. We’re off to Vegas on Sunday for a week in the stupidest town on the planet. I’ll see you all when I get back.

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Labels: General me

Yesterday I earned a good salary in a challenging, stressful but enjoyable job. Today I don’t. The job section of our local paper is advertising four jobs at our place. One of the four is a ‘Head of’, just like me. The job reports to the big boss man, like me. It requires an MBA or equivalent, like me. It offers a salary 30% higher than mine.

What does this mean? Am I being screwed? Am I on my way out? I have no beef about people earning more than me, but salaries quantify your worth to the company. I thought I was part of the solution, a new wave of creative and dynamic individuals hired to turn the company around. Now what? I’m part of the problem? Is a new new wave coming in to solve the problems created by the old guard? Even when this particular member of the old guard has only been in place a year and has never been told they’re going in the wrong direction?

The whole thing smacks of gross incompetence, a common theme at our place, people who earn good money and live good lives making isolated decisions without any consideration for the wider picture. I doubt anyone has even considered what the 30% differentiation communicates to the interested world. Good money does not equal good people.

But why should other people be allowed to make you feel like this? I don’t need more insecurities, I struggle with the concept that my friends hang around with me because they like who I am and not because of Emma or Spankee or a circumstance they’ve found themselves in, I don’t need people to make thoughtless and arbitrary decisions about my worth and value. The calculation is too hard for me as it is.

So what now? I’ll challenge the logic, I’ll apply for the jobs (I’m more than qualified), I’ll make their lives as uncomfortable as possible. And then what? Well, they may tell me to fuck off because they do think I’m an incompetent prick. So in the interim? Beer, flying out to Vegas on Sunday and listening to Public Enemy.

Fuck em all.

Wrong time to blog, I know.

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Labels: Work

To suggest Championship Manager is a popular football management simulation game is like saying your fingers are the frilly things that make your hands look pretty.

The current 4th edition is exquisitely detailed, so much so that there’s a story that Leeds United once tried to buy a fictional Championship Manager player that had been planted deep inside the game.

Personally, I favour Championship Manager 2; partly because the gameplay is less comprehensive so processing power can be handed over to the Angolan 4th Division as well as La Liga. Mostly it’s because years ago I went from managing Oxford in the 2nd division to the European Cup Final with Everton. The game took place in front of my dad’s Amiga at four in the morning, and as we figuratively lifted the trophy I realised my parents were probably upstairs fretting as to why I hadn’t spent my teens experimented with recreation drugs.

In the real world, Jamie Brooks is a prodigiously talented Oxford United striker who two days before a trial with Arsenal was struck down with a debilitating illness called Guillain Barre Syndrome. It nearly cost him his life, and may yet cost him his professional football career.

I’m currently playing Championship Manager 4, and as usual I’m managing Oxford. I’ve let my heart rule my head and let Brooksey rehabilitate on my weighty wage bill. He’s been permanently injured for two seasons, commanding a status of ‘Out for several months with a viral infection’.

During a mammoth session on Sunday a message popped up to say that Brooks was finally available again, apparently (and this is genuinely what it said)…

“Jamie Brooks has resumed full training after his bollock fell off.”

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Labels: Football

There’s something hypnotic about hitting your fridge with a hammer. However rather like dabbling in crack cocaine you really don’t know you’ve gone too far until it’s too late.

I don’t mean thumping a hole in the door to reach the cheese, I mean hacking away the build up of ice. We have huge icebergs packing every crevice and corner of the fridge, our claw hammer lies wantonly on the floor. Pasties and Chicken Kievs whimper quietly deep in the depths of the cold wasteland. I must retrieve them, this I must. I haven’t gone through the filament yet, but I will. Oh yes. I will.

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Labels: General me

We've all done it haven't we? Those cripplingly embarrassing moments which come back to haunt you from time to time. For me, it was accidentally buying my Grandma a three pack of tanga briefs for Christmas. Even now I can't pass a Marks and Spencer without maniacally swatting imaginary flies from around my head.

Poor old Justin, he's 'accidentally' exposed a Janet Jackson booby (or as it's called in Thoroughly Modern Milly - 'a front') during the Superbowl half time show. How lucky she taped what appears to be a small cog from a dishwasher onto her nipple beforehand. How strange that the costume, which looks like it would otherwise withstand a nuclear assault had a weakness around the right cup area. What tough luck, normally when he tries to undue a woman's bra he's all fingers and thumbs.

Whether this was a carefully staged part of the show or not, it doesn't surprise me that the Superbowl needed a bit of spicing up. American Football is the most cripplingly boring game you can hope to watch. Especially as its sold as a sport hell bent on excitement, power and aggression, or at least that's what all the adverts with rambo-esque musical montages of NFL heroes screaming "Let's hurt them bad" would have you believe.

I understand the game - you have six goes (or downs) to move the ball ten yards, if you move it ten yards you get another six goes. If you don't move it ten yards the other team gets the ball. The objective is to move down the field and into the End Zone for a touchdown, worth something like 5 points. It's played in four quarters of fifteen minutes - one hour in total.

I watched a Superbowl final once. During the eighties Channel 4 was more than the visual Guardian it's now become. They used to cover obscure sports like Sumo and Kabbadi, their NFL coverage in particular was exciting and new. 'My team' the San Francisco 49ers reached the final and my A Level timetable meant that I couldn't watch the Sunday night coverage and sleep a little later and get in for Sociology or some such on Monday morning. It was mind crushingly dull, for three hours large men shoved each other and the ball moved inch by inch in one direction, then inch by inch in another direction. In between were endless adverts, or Channel 4 would cut back to the studio where Englishmen with feint American accents would talk about offence and dee-fence.

The half time extravaganza was lavish and expensive, but the sound was ropey and the singers clearly miming, not something that matters when your in Row 4,768 of Candlestick Park. The game ended with a last second touchdown, except in American sport, the last 30 seconds can last up to twenty minutes. It was, apparently, the most exciting Superbowl ever.

Last night I watched the build up, diddy Dermot O'Leary (an NFL fan, apparently) sat next to a monster with a jerry curl afro and nodded along to useful insights like "It's the team with the best team spirit that will win". I watched an hour, which allowed me to see the captain's toss the coin for kick-off (only America can have 6 captains on each side), I also got to see the first twenty seconds of the game. Then I went to bed. Bored.

I woke up this morning to read that New England Patriots had won in a 'thriller' but I now know that it was probably anything but. Anyone who did endure the whole thing would have been thanking god for the right nork of a troubled musical dynasty's favourite daughter.

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Labels: Music

It just doesn't snow like it used to. In the old days you'd get four feet of snow overnight and in the morning you'd wake up to it being bright and sunny. You'd get your wellies on and jump into the nearest snow drift, stand in it up to your neck for hours and not feel the cold at all.

Now snow is grey and slushy and icey, and you get stuck in your car for hours. It took me two hours to drive the half hour journey home on Wednesday night. My dad managed four and a half hours to do the 17 miles from High Wycombe to Thame.

My mum phoned us, clearly worried, at about 8.30. I knew she was worried, because she said "I'm not worried". She was pretty justified, Dad's somewhat demob happy as he careers towards the end of his career on into blissful retirement. He's usually at home by 4.30. His non-appearance was a bit out of character, to exacerbate things further, he didn't have his mobile phone.

Eventually, having trailed a host of websites trying to ascertain something more than 'all roads are hazardous and should be avoided' he appeared. Mum phoned to say he was back and put him on to tell the whole saga.

It had taken an hour to get out of the car park, he said. The traction control and ABS on the Mini is a winner, he said. The conditions were so bad, when he got to Sainsbury's to buy some cigars, the door froze up, he said.

The fact that a pack of cigars took priority over everything else (including my aged mother) didn't seem to strike him as in any way odd.

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Labels: General me

For no good reason yesterday I briefly watched a programme on CBBC called Crush. The show's presenter went to a school, picked out one of the children, David, and revealed to his class the name of the girl he fancied, Katie. David was then challenged take part in a gameshow where the prize was a date with Katie to Disneyland Paris.

OK, bypassing the fact that this is a hideous concept for a children's gameshow, the first round was called 'Getting to know you'. David and Katie went into a booth for three minutes. David had to think up a string of questions to ask Katie. He would then have to use the information he gleaned in the three minutes to answer some questions on Katie's favourite things (Lee from Blue and Ponies, obviously).

David followed up "What's your favourite school?" with "What's your favourite fish?". Oh well, Katie was a bit of a munter.

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Labels: TV and radio

According to Sara, The Last Samurai (or Last of the Summer Wine as it's hilariously known in our house) has Oscar buzz.

The film takes you to back to Japan (not China as stated in earlier editions) about 150 years ago. It's a country in flux; battling the implications of a modernisation programme. Japan's ancient social structures and traditions are being dismantled by a few greedy bureaucrats who see riches in an arms deal with the US. Agreeing to buy the modern weaponry not only secures a trade agreement but supplies the westernised bureaucrats with an arsenal powerful enough to destroy the arcane Samurai that stand in their way. US vets are brought in to train a ramshackle army of Japanese conscripts. Japan gets rich, destroying the samurai and losing its identity in the process. It's all very zeitgeisty, an imperialist regime imposes an ideology at odds with the natural law of a society, only to suffer a cataclysmic cultural kick back. Or something to that effect.

Sounds good doesn't it? Lavish sets, historical context, intricate plotlines; it's got Oscar buzz written all over it.

And then there's Tom Cruise, the westerner thrust into the lost culture, battling the language barrier, struggling to understand the customs played out around him. Is he the silent observer whose battles the contradictions in his head? Nah, he's the most powerful actor in Hollywood, no such understatement here, after all nobody says no to Tom Cruise.

• Nobody says no to the fact he has to become a samurai
• Nobody says no to the fact he's the last samurai
• Nobody says no to the fact he has to be the best samurai there ever was
• Nobody bothers to explain whether an attack by a gang of ninjas is a government backed assassination attempt on the village's powerful leader (BORING!) or a vehicle for Cruise to get cool with a sword.
• Nobody says no to Cruise bucking a thousand years of tradition by turning Japan's Emperor from a distant and impassive demi-god into a compassionate humanist by the power of one well constructed monologue
• Nobody says no to Cruiso endlessly winning mock training fights with other samurai whilst ignoring the sub plot of rampant westernisation happening in Yokahama
• Nobody says no to Cruise falling in love with the only young woman in the village
• Nobody says no to her falling in love with him despite the fact he killed her husband
• Nobody says no to Cruise turning her from the brink of suicide to unstinting love by saying he was 'sorry'
• Nobody says no to Cruise standing with a horse in the middle of a mountain range as the film closes
Nobody, presumably, will say no to him getting an Oscar for this pile of self indulgent shite. The nob.

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Labels: Films

It may surpise you to hear that the picture on the left is not a close up of a skip outside the back of a hairdressers shop. It is, in fact, darts player Andy 'The Viking' Fordham. The woman on the right is UK Pop Idol 2003 winner Michelle McManus. Both had a good day last Sunday. They hit professional highs with Fordham winning the BDO World Darts Championship and McManus clocking her first UK number one.


Unless you were beginning to think my new site accommodated for the blind by automatically switching your browser to a magnified setting it won't have escaped you're attention that these people are larger than your average celebrity.

Being fat affects these two in different ways. For Fordham, it's a huge positive. Firstly, he's supposed to be like this and secondly he's more like this than anyone else in the darting fraternity. He weighs 30 stone and wears a couple of hundredweight of cheap jewellery on his non-throwing arm as a counterbalance. He's the quintessentially stereotyped darts player, which is much easier for the general public to comprehend.

McManus, on the other hand, is a square peg in a round hole and is not so fortunate. It's not that big people can't be successful singers, ask Aretha Franklin, Meatloaf, Luciano Pavarotti, Alison Moyet and Chubby Checker, it's just it's better that pop stars are thin. Let me explain.



The music industry needs a high volume of hits to generate a steady income. The rare and unpredictable commodity of talent doesn't come in an even flow, nor is it available in high enough volumes to pay the bills. Mute records boss, Daniel Miller, recognises that he'll shed a heap of money on Luke Slater and Plastickman records in the four years between each multi-million selling Depeche Mode or Moby album - something he has to grin and bare. In the world of the corporate music industry, where there are investors to satisfy and staff to pay what is needed is a steady income. In order to keep selling records these companies have turned to things more tangible, immediate and predictable. By dancing, flashing cheeky chappy grins, and baring flesh, a good-looking pop star veils their limited musical talents. Kylie is a supreme pop star, but not because of her voice. A pop star's talent is totally different to the talent of Elvis or The Beatles.

The problem is that McManus can't tick many of the boxes a modern pop star should. She's not thin; she can't suggestively rotate her hips like Girls Aloud or do the clench fist of agony patented by Gareth Gates (or wear oversized cowboy boots - I can't find a picture, but you watch). In pop music terms she has nothing but her average voice. It's not a problem that most pop stars have to deal with, but she does. The Pop Idol public viewers vote inevitably chooses a winner who is the most average and with so little in her arsenal, you can't help thinking she's ultimately doomed.

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Labels: TV and radio

We were interviewing at work today. One of the candidates said "It's hard to build relationships over email... unless you're a paedophile of course".

We said: "Um".

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Labels: Work

My left foot was forged on the playing fields of Thame and can shoot, pass, and dribble. My right, to use footballing parlance, is only useful for standing on. I didn’t think it could be more useless, until Boxing Day.

Boxing Day is my favourite day of the Christmas period. The pressures of present buying have gone, and you’re free to get that musty claustrophobic feeling of The Day itself out of your system. 

My Boxing Day is about football. In the morning I join The Men to wheeze my way around the local park for a couple of hours. Then it’s home, shower and off to the Boxing Day game at Oxford. 

This year’s morning game had a good turn out with a good-natured robust game of seven a side. I’d even bought a new pair of Diadora Contaccso Sg Football Boots from Brantano for fifteen quid. After an hour Gareth waltzed his way through our static defence and lined up to slot home his team’s eighth goal. I gallantly careered across to block and planted my right foot in preparation for my final lunge. Except it wasn’t my foot, but my ankle that took my full, and not inconsiderable, weight.

I felt a twisting crunching sensation in my leg and a shooting pain. Gareth suggested I “run it off”, but I could barely stand. By the time I got home swelling the size of a tennis ball began to appear around my ankle. By the time I’d foolishly hobbled to and from Oxford’s 2-1 win over Orient it was going purple.

This was my first proper sporting injury; a sprain, a proper ‘damaged ligaments’ sprain. Chicks dig sporting injuries, it was all “Ooh’s” and “Aah’s” and “shouldn’t you go to the doctors”. I was tended to and waited on for, ooh, about four and a half minutes. What I didn’t realise is that Chicks don’t dig sporting injuries for very long, Lucy was so disinterested that about 2 minutes after seeing it she acted out a What’s My Line charade of a soldier clipping my elevated foot with one forceful downward swing of her arm. Everyone winced… then laughed like drains. I thought an injury would be cool, I hadn’t anticipated the weeks of nagging, dull pain that nobody is interested in. It’s getting back to a normal colour now but it’s going to take six weeks to heal and longer to fix. 

The blood from the sprain flooded into my foot causing it to swell. I wake up in agony as the veins become packed full of goop, the hairs on top of my foot feel like tree trunks. They just don’t tell you about this stuff.


An unforeseen aside of the injury was seeing Jules. I’ve known Jules for nearly twenty years she’s funny, silly, and sporty and bullies you about your posture. I don’t see any of my friends as the eloquent, trained, skilled professionals that they are so watching Jules acting out her role as my Physiotherapist was odd. She was professional, knowledgeable, impassive, and caring. She examined me, massaged my foot and gave me advice about treatment and exercises. She even ranked it as one of the top ten sprains she’d seen. I know she’s trained to do this stuff, but there was something very soothing about it. I can’t wait until I have a CRM web enabled database problem, then I can watch Spankee at work. 

Mind you, she also took away the beer I was drinking saying alcohol was bad for the healing. Then she drank it herself which I presume is some kind of homeopathic alternative treatment.

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Labels: General me

OK, so we’re just about there. I’ve been toying with changing things around for a while and New Year seemed a sensible time to do it. There’s still quite a lot of fiddling around to do, and I think the design needs tweaking (is the old school styling right? is Courier working? is it a little bright? do we want the old logo back?) anyway, I figure it’s time to throw it at the wall and see what sticks.

So what’s new? Not much, but you can make comments on my postings, so you will inevitably meet Barry, resident of Linhope and Spankee’s flatmate. I’m pretty sure he’ll be correcting my spelling and generally hurling abuse in response to each and every post within seconds of it going live.

You can still read about who I am, although it needs re-writing. You can still have free mix CD’s. There’s a load of new links. The decaying Wants list has been replaced by a less volatile list of CD’s, which should help you to get organised if you want to rob my house. I’ve added a cast list so you can put faces to names and there are a few new pictures.

Things look a little plain on the homepage at the moment, the page looks a lot better with pictures, so on the left is a few of the CD’s I’m currently listening to and my plan is to furnish more posts with pictures and links, it’ll look lovely, promise.

Normal service is about to resume, Christmas and New Year was eventful, so prepare yourselves for the story of The Foot and our New Year shindig in Derbyshire.

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Labels: General me

WHY [smack] WON'T [smack] THIS [smack] FUCKING [smack] THING [smack] UPDATE [smack] MY [smack] SITE [smack].

Oh, that's sorted it.

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Labels: General me

For many people, today is the last day in the office before Christmas. This creates a certain bonohomie around the place as people become demob happy at the prospect of the coming festive season.

Normally, I look across the desk at the top of someones head and a wall planner. Today I am looking across my desk at novelty Christmas earrings, and a pair of novelty deely boppers.

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Labels: Work

Walking from Marylebone to Baker Street Tube yesterday morning I heard the tones of a perculiarly muffled medley of Christmas carols being sung. It sounded rather like a call to Muslim prayer as heard in those pre-war Iraqi reports on how Baghdad continues to function despite the threat of invasion. I thought, perhaps, there was a nearby Mosque I'd never heard or seen before.

But this was clearly Christian song and as far as I know George Bush hasn't achieved religious hegemony yet. My second thought was that there was a workman nearby enjoying the festive season in an area where the acoustics distored and amplified his voice across West London.

I crossed the road and passed Boots, and the singing got louder. The rush hour pedestrian traffic was quite heavy so it took a while to see where the noise was coming from. Sitting on the floor was a tiny tramp nonchelantly singing through a four foot long traffic cone.

Naturally nobody gave him money, success really does take the edge off this level of creativity.

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Labels: General me

Following the Secret Santa debacle, Friday's Christmas do was, as expected, OK. It wasn't great, nor amazing, just OK. The Ambassadors of Fun were knocked sideways, because the little taste of Rio (in Bracknell) turned out to be a just a side salad with a big kebab of Berkshire concrete hell hole on top. The reality was never going to meet the expectation, so the night was always going to be tinged with disapointment.

The food was generally dire; Tesco value pack potato wedges, pita bread and fried mushrooms passed off as canapes, microwave heated chicken, followed by Creme caramel without the crunchy top.

The entertainment came from the Red Hot Dancers, pretty girls in thongs, and greased up boys in loin cloths executing moves choreographed in the school playground. By dreading the thing all week, I gave it every opportunity to exceed my expectations. It didn't.

Finally there was the disco which was one paced and predictable. People jogged on the spot through endless office party classics. The songs are paced so not to enduce heart palpatations amongst people who call dancing "Having a bit of a boogie". If you're going to dance, you might as well dance, break sweat, turn purple, put your head in a base bin, at least camp it up a bit. If at the beginning of the next century they look back on the pop culture of yesteryear, hopefully the office party bored swaying dance won't make an appearance.

I knew things weren't going well two minutes after we left. Two women behind me were chatting. "Do you remember Morris Minor's" said one, "I don't remember" said the other.

It wasn't like there weren't people enjoying the night, tables where everyone genuinely got on seemed to have a lot of fun. I couldn't help but think that if I had gone to it with the people from the Little Publishing Company on the Hill, I would probably have had the best night ever.

Leaving your inhibitions and the subsequent consequences at the door seems to be the way to do it though. The girl in the black mini dress held together by a reel of tit tape took this approach. There was flesh everywhere, the dress was cut down to her waist, her thunderous thighs shone in the spot lights. She seemed unconcerned that her bosses were watching as she ascended onto the podium and, in front of four hundred people, proceded to give herself a gynacological examination through several Ricky Martin hits.

It seemed to be a theme of the night, whilst she was the first, she wasn?t the last. Another spent the whole of Lady Marmalade thrusting her crotch in the face of an impassive bouncer. It seems that despite the potential long term consequence of these actions, the purchase of a new g-string is not something to be kept a secret.

The women weren't alone. Men, of course, can always be drawn to the honeypot of some knicker flashing. But the disturbing and decidedly less aesthetically pleasing sight of middle aged senior managers taking the opportunity to drag their tasty marketing executive onto the dancefloor and cop feel of thigh and booby was truely unpleasent.

Not that the modern streetwise young lady of today can't cope with an unsophisticated letch. Most young ladies today know that a sultry shimmy around the belly of an overwieght Accounts Director is less of an inappropriate sexual advance and more a meaningless negotiating lever come pay review time. But the thing is, its got to make Monday's Team Meeting a little uncomfortable hasn't it?

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Labels: Work

We've just done Secret Santa.. the woman who hated what I bought her last year got a voucher. Clearly someone wasn't taking any risks. The reaction from the women? Couldn't have been more excited if she was sitting on a tumble drier.

I got a box of Celebrations Chocolates and a whiskey drinkers gift set. My Christmas is made, god bless you all.

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Labels: Work

This is where blogging comes into its own, an opportunity to release some built up tension?

God I hate Christmas at work. It's the Christmas party on Friday and people have become utterly pre-occupied by it. It's like they've never been out before. We're a small company, so we're going to a theme night in Bracknell designed for small companies, it's called something like Red Hot in Rio and sounds like hell on earth. It's going to be all novelty ties and inappropriate sexual suggestions - it's so The Office it's unreal.

'Is everyone excited about Friday' Said the girl who job appears to consist of acting as an ambassador of fun for the company.

The temptation to tell her to fuck right off was almost overwhelming, instead I showed my disdain by not looking up from my keyboard and asking what we were supposed to wear. She was horrified I didn?t know because she's been planning her outfit since fucking October.

On top of that comes the office phenomenon of Secret Santa. We're operating a kind of Secret Santa style present buying operation amongst the family this year, which is fine, we want to buy presents for these people.

I have no desire to buy a present for anyone here at work. We did it last year, and it's slowly come back to me that the person I bought for was positively offended by the £5 piece of crap I bought them. They don't know it was me, and it wasn't offensive in the obscene sense, but it was a piece of crap. This is because a. I had £5 to spend, b. I didn't know this person from Adam and c. I had no enthusiasm for the concept.

I can be a generous and creative present buyer when I want to be. Emma has benefited from Off-Roading, Simon from rally driving, and my dad was positively enthused during the series of exotic novelty fruits. But people at work?

The reason I'm blogging this is because I'm tempted to come clean and announce it was me and that I don't care because the shitty clock I got went straight in the bin at the garage before I got home. I wasn't offended by receiving this turd of a present, because I have the half a brain that is needed to know that Secret Santa is nothing more than a meaningless token effort that is only fun for compulsive present buyers who would buy presents for dead cows given half the chance.

How dare they be offended? What the hell did they expect? It?s a secret, so you can?t ask for a list, and it's £5 so your not getting a Ferrari. It is a scheme forced on us by the ambassadors of fun, which means it has appeal to the lowest common denominator.

So distressed was this person at the present I got them, that this year they've doubled the budget and allowed each person to give some suggestions. The slip of paper I picked includes Night Watch by Terry Pratchett, which helpfully someone has put in brackets: - (A book). I feel like storming downstairs and banging on the desk and shouting "I KNOW IT'S A BOOK NOW DO YOU KNOW WHAT A KORG KAOSS 2 IS?" before walking out.

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Labels: Work

Just for the hell of it, I mixed up a heap of the tunes I played on Saturday, I'm calling it Scuff Live, it's not in the mix club yet because The Premiership starts in four minutes, but if you can't wait, email me and I'll send a copy. Here's the tracklisting.

Never Leave Me (Uh Oooh, Uh Oooh) (Acapella) - Lumidee
Light Your Ass On Fire - Busta Rhymes feat. Pharrell
Stand Up - Ludacris feat Shawna
Turn It Up (Refried) - Ugly Duckling
William The First - Mighty Dub Katz
Toot Toot Hey Beep Beep (Mantronix G-String Mix) - Kool Keith and Heather Hunter
Work - MAW feat Puppah Nas-T and Denise
Damelo - DJ Gregory
E Samba - David Penn Remix
Go Down (Tim Deluxe Mix) - Jon Carter
Deeper Down (Hill Sixty Mix) - DKS
Love At First Sight (Kid Creme Mix) - Kylie Minogue
Punkcity - D'Ranged
It Just Won?t Do (Without You) - Tim Deluxe feat Sam Obernik
Lucky Star (Jaxxhouz Dub) - Basement Jaxx feat Dizzee Rascal
Satisfaction (Isak Original) - Benny Benassi Presents The Biz
Crazy In Love - Beyonce Knowles

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Labels: Music

I love the way after a party you start to piece together little bits and pieces that you missed. People tell their own stories of the night, things you didn?t have anything to do with. Gareth tells me that the drink was overflowing with his mates. Apparently Gareth's best man Tim strode up to the bar at one point and said to the barman 'Can I have five of the gayest cocktail you've got please?'

Having sunk something sickly and pink with umbrellas in it, it was Gareth?s turn to step up to the oche. He asked the Australian barman what it was he had been drinking, to which the barman replied -

'I dunno mate, but it was pretty bloody gay'

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Labels: Music

Prior to the 1998 World Cup cart horse England legend Tony Adams was interviewed in one of the papers he reads in his post-booze renaissance. He plays the piano, goes to the theatre and doesn’t feel self conscious about giving paternal love to another man. One copy of the Observer to Mr Adams please.

He said the weight of expectation on a World Cup squad is the hardest thing to bear because when you're the one on the pitch, it's you who has to do the things everyone at home assumes you will. So, whilst most people have the luxury of sitting in their chair claiming, when 2-0 up with 20 minutes to go, that Tony Adams is the best in the world at shutting a game down. It is Tony Adams, human being, who executes the minutiae of what this means - slowing the game down, retaining possession, keeping a clear head, staying organised, communicating, closing others' down etc. If he doesn't, regardless of his history or reputation, the team will lose and he'll be to blame. Everyone expects it; Tony's got to do it.

It's this malaise of expectation that people with a similar background to me often go through. Our comfortable, middle class, safe and stable upbringing lulls you into a false sense of security. Our parents provide a comfortable environment that we've grown used to. If we needed something, generally speaking we could have it. We didn't have shed loads of money but nor were we short, concerns about cash, if there were any, simply never got through to us kids. There may have been the odd overdraft here, or loan there but it didn't deprive us of shoes.

Now we're in the big bad world it's easy to assume that these comfortable straight lines of our childhood will continue. That without any effort we can forge and afford that same comfortable life. It's easy to forget that in order to stay on that even keel we still have to steer the boat. Redundancy, divorce, separation, negative equity and all the things you may never have experienced in the past are still there to get you. Just because your in an ocean with a thousand fish, doesn't mean you can stop swimming.

On Saturday night Tredge told me he was 'Loving my work' on the decks, I don't take, or believe compliments easily so I told him that we played what we wanted for four hours then stuck Crazy in Love by Beyonce on. It's rather easy to assume that this is all there is to it. After all, people like dancing and having a good time, so all you have to do is put good records on. Simple.

Afterwards, I was kind of disappointed that this party staple was the thing that triggered mass shape pulling extravaganza. After all it was the record that made people move, I just put the needle on that record. But then again football's just about someone kicking a leather bag of air between two sticks. Having a comfortable and successful life is just about having money, a positive outlook on life and nice friends and family. Conceptually it's all so easy.

I got thinking. It is easy to play records and operate a mixer, it's easy to say that you simply drop a big party bomb and everyone dances. But you try doing it at 7.30 when people are just taking their coats off and you'll get the mildest of nods to a recognisable tune. Try pushing people onto the dancefloor with hit after hit and you'll have an empty dance floor all night. DJ-ing looks easy, and the mechanics of it are, but there's more to it than that. You have to gently cajole people into it, make the atmosphere comfortable and fun, warm their minds and bodies up to the idea.

That's the theory. But better than that, that's what we did. Slowly, over five hours - a fifth of a day - we eased people into the zone. From walking out of a cold winter night and onto the dancefloor. At 12.40 we knew, absolutely knew that the party was ready for that record, we knew the reaction it would get. Why? Because we understood the dynamics of the party, we'd set it up that way, we'd provided the atmosphere, the venue, the drink, the company and the music. Nobody knew that they were being controlled, in fact we didn't know we were doing it, but we orchestrated it all so that at 12.40, no earlier or later, we could pull the trigger and it would go off.

So we pulled the trigger, and it went off. How bloody exciting is that?




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Labels: Music

“Hi do you remember me? I used to work in the department opposite you” said the girl whose face I immediately and incorrectly identified as belonging to Catherine O’Leary, who I lived round the corner from my parents and I haven’t seen since I was nine.

It was a bit like that on Saturday. When Simon and I decided to have a party in a pub that would hold 200 we were pessimistic about being able to fill it. So we told everyone to invite their friends, and their friends friends and their, well, you get the picture. We had no idea who would turn up.

“These are my flatmates” said the girl, pointing to a woman who stared at me as though I’d unpicked the stitching on her favourite teddy bear. Who two minutes later was poking me and massaging my shoulders. Who two minutes after that appeared to be retching over the bar.

“Dance with me”. I didn’t. Gareth later informed me, in a story which became more grotesque with each telling, that she quickly became involved in a vigorously amorous clinch with a stranger in brown slip-ons.

The multiplier effect of our laissez fair invite policy threatened to swamp the venue, the phone kept ringing, the emails kept arriving, the guests became further and further removed from the original invite list. Everyone turned up, from Internet celebrities who live in log cabins in Canada to Emma’s sister’s friend’s husband’s sister’s mates.

It was, of course, great. Faces put to names, old acquaintances rekindled. People sucked vodka out of the Ice Luge. Penny and Mike flew in from Jersey especially as a total and complete surprise. The night was punctuated by countless half conversations with everyone from my sister, to my oldest school friends to newer friends like Clare and Meg. If I stood everyone in a line, these people could have pieced together my entire life story.

There were selfish reasons for the party, we wanted to DJ. Five hours through Maceo and the Macs, Salt N Pepa, Ludacris, Collapsed Lung, Junior Jack, into an awkward hole I struggled to climb out of, back out to Finger Lickin’ breaks, and inappropriately hard techno. For the final 15 minutes we pounded out Groove is in the Heart, Crazy in Love, and Jump Around to a room full of people dancing on chairs and pulling their best shapes. Even the bar staff were bouncing around like loons. My only regret is that we didn’t have anything to play for the Finnish barmaid who asked if we had anything from her homeland. She still gave us a couple of free shots, presumably because she’d had a good night and we’d been good customers.

Eventually our extended licence expired and the lights came up, it was time to pull out cables, pack away records and lug the PA back down three flights of stairs. Suddenly we were confronted by a wall of very very drunk people. Supremely, unexpectedly drunk people, each and every person I talked to was bouncing off the walls, or slurring their speech or acting inappropriately. Probably because unknown to most people, the bar staff kept in the spirit of the party by only serving doubles.

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Labels: Music

When I worked at The Little Oxford Publishing Company on the Hill I had an almost sibling relationship with a girl in my department. Whilst I was more sensible and pragmatic, she was deeply intelligent yet a bit erratic so we got on and hated each other at the same time. My approach meant my Directorial bollockings were less frequent and my pay rises marginally better. Although in that company, this really only meant that my peanuts were dry roasted and hers ready salted.

Anyway, she had perfect punchline to any musical conversation: -

“So what are you having as the first dance at your wedding will it be Bastard by Motley Crue?”
“What are you going to sing at the Karaoke how about Bastard by Motley Crue?”
“I always sing songs to my niece, Row Row Row Your Boat, Incey Wincey Spider, Bastard by Motley Crue.”
“Which tune from Oklahoma shall we sing next, hmm, Bastard by Motley Crue?”

I use it all the time, it’s the perfect way to end any conversation about music. Anyway, I had my first homoerotic experience last week, a mid-week karaoke night in Coventry.

I have no beef with Karaoke, herds of women screeching Summer Lovin’, tribes of men hollering Wonderwall. People seem to enjoy themselves, there’s a sense of fun in humiliating yourself with your mates. It’s safe, it’s silly, it’s what you do from time to time. I wouldn’t do it even if you nailed my scrotum to my feet, but people do it don’t they?

Only this wasn’t that type of Karaoke, this was for regulars, earnest men with delusions of a semi professional singing career clustered round a small dance floor taking it in turns to show us their stuff. Wind Beneath My Wings, Forever in Blue Jeans, Life is a Rollercoaster, and, ulp, Angels.

God it was awful, navigating an axis of Stereophonics and Neil Diamond, each bloke, aged about 50, dressed casually, with the look of the killer about them, would step up, close their eyes in emotional concentration and with a little echo effect from Dave’s Mobile Disco, give it welly. I can’t imagine for a second that they would go back to work on Thursday and tell their mates what they did. They probably don’t tell their wives, it would have been like, I don’t know, buggering farmyard animals or something.

These guys were serious about their seedy hobby; they even did that thing where they moved the microphone away during the long notes. You know, to protect the sound system from their powerful range.

My reticence to engage in this musical S&M meant I was accused of trying to look cool, mainly because I didn’t dance to the bloke in the braces singing Enrique Inglasias’ Hero. I was accused of being miserable because I suggested we threw sugar lumps at the bad people, glasses at the really awful. People were even shocked when I got up to sing, but alas they didn’t have Bastard by Motley Crue.

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Labels: General me

Point your right finger in the air and draw the figure six. Keep circling your finger in this way.

Now stick your right leg out, circle your foot in the same direction as your finger.

Now whilst you’re doing it, change the direction of your circling your finger.

LOOK! Your foot has changed direction too.

Try it again, much as you try not to, your foot will always comply with your finger. But you can do it if you use opposite fingers and feet.

There, that killed a couple of minutes didn’t it?

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Labels: General me

To my immense disappointment this weekend I had to buy myself a dinner suit. For one, I've hit an age where my friends rather like the curio of dressing up posh on occasion. But mostly my need comes from my job, which dictates that I have to go to a couple of black tie dinners a year (no, I'm not a very part time waiter).

So, it's become economical for me to buy, rather than rent, something I didn't really want to do. I don't like wearing them, I don't feel particularly special in it. I feel my youth ebbing away as I'm shoe horned into the constraints of adulthood. I know, I'm probably too old to get sulky about wearing a tie, but I'd really prefer a groovy pair of trainers.

Simon's got his own dinner suit, which has been sagely handed down from his dad and has probably been hand stitched by an aged London tailor who works only by candlelight. When I heard that he was wearing his dad's dinner suit I envisaged huge flares, a purple dress shirt with capacious ruffles cascading down his chest and a vast velvet bow tie, like Eddie Large on his primetime Saturday evening show in the 70's. Sadly though, it's a classic cut that fits perfectly.

I'm not sure whether my dad has a dinner suit, he's several inches shorter than me, so I'd look a right banana if I did wear it. I had to get my own.

My brief was simple, keep it classic and keep the cost down. There's not a great choice of course, a dinner suit is a dinner suit. Each shop has a rack of classic black suits; stripe down the trousers, slightly shiny lapels, the works. They all also have a couple of white ones, and ties with diamante diamonds embedded, you know, for people who want to look a bit different and special (aka like a twat). I was flumuxed as the couple next to me in Marks and Spencer oggled the white suits with admiration, putting a range of multi-coloured bow ties up against the lapels to see how they matched.

I went classic, and cheap - machine washable even. Sullied and depressed, I also bought a parka with a furry hood, It's kind of cool, like what the kids wear.

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Labels: General me

I’m back. Flu-less, cold-less, injury-less, even hassle and stress less. I fell into the dark abyss and was, for seventy two hours, corrupted and diseased. I succumbed to my first day off work (man or boy) since Kenny Dalglish resigned as Liverpool manager, but having weathered that harsh winter, I’m refreshed and unleaden with the angst of my circumstance.

I couldn’t have done it without my friends Nurofen, Lemsip Cough Medicine (for chesty coughs) or Ribena Original for they all gallantly waged war with me on the hideous spectre. And we won.

I don’t know whether I feel better (better than I did before I was ill) because I’ve beaten the illness, or because I'm not ill anymore, or because I know that when I’m old and decrepit, every day will feel a bit like last week and I should be thankful I’ve at least got me ‘elf.

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Labels: General me

I’m at work and I’m ill. Properly, unable to do anything ill, not a bit chesty, I don’t have that flu people who don’t actually have flu get. The flu that manifests itself as a slightly irritating cough and a runny nose. No, I have a flu which renders me unable to do anything. Well, apart from foolishly drag myself into work so not to break the record of not having had a day off work for 13 years. I played football last night, but the aches and pains are nothing to do with my fitness or lack thereof. Emma’s had it, her kids at school had it, and now I have it. Ill.

Nobody cares of course, you say that you’re feeling terrible and people make neutral comments like “There’s something going around”. The coughing interrupts your sentences, making you sound like you’re putting it on for effect. Nobody wants to be my audience; nobody wants to watch me play out my ordeal, my head in my hands, the shuffle to the kitchen. Despite inviting people to join me, nobody wants to follow me to the toilet and watch me sit in a cubicle for 20 minutes slumped up against the wall. Nobody wants to get inside my head and really know how I’m feeling, and how brave I’m being.

I shouldn’t be here. I should be at home, in bed. But I have a week of emails to get through having been in York last week. I want to have a day off on Friday, and don’t feel its right to run sick days into holidays. The thought of driving home fills me with dread. I know, I’m patently stupid, you have no sympathy for me.

I shall tootle along until three, then I’m going. I’m not having any lunch, because I can’t face it. If I go at three I’ve practically done my hours and the run will remain unbroken.

I feel awful, I really want you to know that.

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Labels: General me

Work has consumed my time, my thoughts and everything over the last six weeks. It’s had a peculiar effect on me; I’m not sleeping, I’m suffering from a very uncomfortable frozen shoulder, but more than the physical, it’s sucked my imagination dry and distracted me from the things that I consider makes my life worthwhile; family, friends, music, football. Even trying to write to this site, I’ve sat trying to articulate the few ideas that have permeated the fug but as soon as I sit down the ideas, the energy, and the flow of thoughts all dry up.

Some people get to have their work and their life on the same continuum. I imagine musicians and sportsmen don’t see any real divide between what they do to pay the bills and the rest of their life, but for most of us work and life appear to be very different things.

It’s not right; our lives should be our lives. A linear progression from birth to death during which we do everything we want, whenever we want. Instead, five sevenths of our time we’re diverted into the work cul-de-sac which is full of frustration, politics, incompetence, dealing with people you would normally cross the street to avoid.

It’s a peculiar thing. My ambition at work, and what keeps me doing what I’m doing, is to make something that doesn’t work, work well. It’s because I think I can achieve this that I don’t run away and live in a hole in the ground. But despite this ambition, the truth is, I don’t really care if it doesn’t work. If someone tells me I’m not allowed to see any one of my friends in the future I’d be devastated. If someone informed me that I couldn’t achieve what I want to achieve at work, I’d greet it with a shrug of the shoulders. None the less, I still follow this foolish ambition to make the company I work for, the best it can be.

I could have it all wrong. I work for a company that relies on volunteers to do a lot of its work. It has very clear ethical guidelines that ensure these volunteers don’t exploit the company for their own gain. But the rules are flaunted continuously and people are making money left, right and centre. They should be working for a ‘greater good’ but most are doing it for their bank accounts and egos. I could use the company to improve my personal wealth if I wanted to. I could increase my income by up to 50% by ramping up my expenses on meaningless meetings all over the country. I could have twice as much holiday by taking days off sick or sneaking home when the boss is away. Nobody would bat an eyelid if I did. But with me, if someone invites me to a networking lunch in Bristol, I turn it down in favour of a day in the office trying to meet the company’s objectives. It seems hopelessly naive.

I’m not a blind company man; I just think this is the right way to work. But it causes me so many hassles. My salary is my salary, I don’t claim anymore expenses than I should. So I have a little less to spend at the weekends than I might have. I haven’t had a day off sick since the half term before my A Levels thirteen years ago. So I get five weeks holiday and no more. I put a lot of energy trying to block people who are just trying line their pockets or egos in the name of being a volunteer because I don’t think it helps the company and I don’t think its right. I know some people don’t like me because of it, and I worry about what is being plotted behind my back. I wonder whether it’s really worth the hassle.

On the other hand, I’m punching well above my weight in terms of my role and responsibilities. People far brighter than me at school, who went to better universities, are not doing nearly as well as I am. By doing what I do, the way I do it, I’ve had great holidays in Paris, Barcelona, Majorca, and Italy in the last twelve months and still have Las Vegas to come in February. I watch Oxford play football, and buy records and can still afford to eat. More importantly I have the best group of friends and family I could ever hope to have. Presumably, like I do with them, they stick by me because of who I am and the way I am. If I was different I’d have a different life, with different friends. Perhaps your working life does reflect on your real life in a more profound way than by just paying for it. Given that I don’t want a different real life, perhaps I should stick with the same working life I have.

Maybe modern life is not that rubbish after all.

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Labels: General me

Occasionally I’ll receive a text message from Simon hailing the virtues of some CD he's listening to at work. You wonder why many IT projects fail? Probably because IT consultants are listening to Acid House whilst building your fully secure online banking service.

"Ooh I must remember to encrypt the current account details...WHOOOHOO here comes the breakdown WHISTLE POSSE WHERE ARE YOU!... now where was I, oh yeah, coffee"

Quite how he manages to concentrate on anything whilst listening to the headrush of Hardfloor Acperience is anyone’s guess.

I like listening to music whilst I work; my A Level revision was done to the magical tones of The Orb’s UFOrb, Adventures Beyond the Ultraworld, and the Aubrey Mixes. When I used to work at home, a carefully selected CD warbling in the background increased my productivity and eased my working pains.

“If this annoys you, I can turn it off”

I couldn’t actually hear anything, but it turns out The Woman At Work has Dido playing on her laptop. Now, of course I can here the tinny top end of each tune, awful whimsical music, played through terrible laptop speakers at a volume which is a fraction above audible a fraction below clear.

Heaven, absolute bloody bliss.

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Labels: Work

I seem to have slipped into a parallel universe. Usually I have time to muse about the world and the universe, construct complex theories on life, and weave comical set pieces which lighten the heavy burden of our times, then forget them all and post gibbering rubbish on this site. Not at the moment though.

On a totally unrelated note, should planning be about ensuring you have a manageable and consistent flow of activities, not having, for example, 21 projects to manage in the last three months of the year, compared to 4 in the first three months. Also, you know that thing about how authority and responsibility should go hand in hand? How you shouldn’t divorce the two? You shouldn’t assume the latter without the former. And, on balance you shouldn’t devolve all responsibility when things go bad and assume it when they get sorted out. Should you, SHOULD YOU?

Anyway, enough of conceptual thoughts not grounded in anyone’s experience of the last couple of weeks. What else?

Emma graduated from her Headteacher qualification course and received a paperweight for her trouble. A metaphor, said the guest speaker, “The paper can wait”. Alyce hurt her back falling off a horse. Well, I say hurt, broke it is more accurate. She’s in a back brace, but she’s going to be OK, although apparently a bit shorter.

Scant consolation I know, but we went to visit her in hospital on Sunday and had a couple of hours chatting and reminiscing. It was ace. Poor Alyce had been stuck lying on her back for a week and was bored silly, we suggested, helpfully, you’ll agree, that she could count the dimples on the ceiling tiles.

“174” she replied.

I tell you what though, she’s dead funny Alyce, we had a great time.

Oxford are on fire after a humbling defeat to Reading (more of that below for the benefit of Linhope stalwart and Reading fan Barry) so it’s happy days. Imagine if my life was blighted by people who couldn’t plan and people who assumed authority but no responsibility?

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Labels: General me

A bloke at the football has a replica shirt emblazoned with the legend ‘We 8 Reading’. This is nearly as perplexing as the gutsy singing of the Hokey Cokey at the Kassam recently; how on earth do you…“do the Scott McNiven and you turn around?” I’m perplexed because much as we try to 8 Reading, no Oxford fan can really bring themselves to do it.

Hence, the banks of the East Stand faithful sing “We hate Reading (‘suppose) and we hate Reading (‘suppose)”. OK, well, they don’t, but they did sing “You’re only here ‘cause it’s Oxford” to Reading fans who were indeed only there because their team was playing in Oxford which does strip the song of the irony it had when it was sung to 30,000 Arsenal fans at Highbury.

Like the game at Highbury we were cut to ribbons by a Reading side who passed their way through our lumbering back five on countless occasions and enjoyed considerable shooting practice from the edge of the six yard box. Oxford are a team built for the third division, Reading for the first. Oxford’s pitch offers, quite literally, too level a playing field upon which expensively constructed teams are invited to outclass us. It’s all so clinically obvious, it’s difficult to be bothered about it.

I wandered whether it was just me but the blokes behind me confirmed it wasn’t. When they spotted the bloke in the We 8 Reading shirt one turned to the other and asked…

“Do you think he 8’s writing too?”

To which his mate replied, in a rare moment of quality East Stand humour

“He probably 8’s all school”

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Labels: Football